Night Extra

“But I’m a classy guy. I tell dirty stories in the locker room in Latin. But going back to Caldwell. His life is all wrapped up in neat, well-ordered categories, and he’s approaching the male menopause right on schedule. So what can he do? Drink? That would be my choice, but that takes imagination. Hobbies? That’s the ticket. Caldwell picked cleanliness as a hobby. First he probably had his house and grounds manicured, fussed around coiling up the garden hoses and burning up the leaves. Then he looked around and to his delight saw a great big dirty city he could go to work on.” Karsh dropped his cigarette into what was left of his drink. “He’s set for life. Thousands of dirty alleys and stinking sewers and cruddy politicians to fumigate and burn. He’s lucky, a kid in a candy store, a sadist running wild in a concentration camp.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Terrell said.

“Possibly. Interest in the public weal, duty, right and wrong, morality — could be, Sam.” Karsh shrugged lightly. “But I don’t see it.”

After dinner their interlude of privacy came to an end; the gambler returned to offer Karsh a bet on the St. Francis basketball game. The odds were wrong, Terrell knew, but Karsh took the bet for a figure that made his heart beat faster. The syndicate salesman and press agents came in on the second wave.

“Where’s Bill?” Terrell asked, with no interest at all.

“Prettying up. Don’t worry, she’ll be along.”

“I really wasn’t worrying.”

The syndicate salesman had moved so close to Karsh that he was practically in his lap. “Mike, I just want a quick reaction, just a bounce. Tim O’Mara — he does that swell men’s column — well, he’s been bitten by the bulls in Spain, and he’s come up with a terrific idea. More Americans see bullfights every year, and O’Mara thinks they’d like to follow the fights when they come home. You know, gossip about the big matadors, a story on the big fights at Madrid and Pamplona, that sort of thing. He thinks there’s enough interest and material to support a weekly feature. What do you think? I told Tim I’d get your opinion.”

“A how-to column?” Karsh asked him with a straight face.

“No — more gossip and color.”

“But I like the how-to angle,” Terrell said. He could see that Karsh was masking his irritation behind a droll smile; Karsh hated blood sports.

“Yes, that’s the pitch,” Karsh said, nodding. “And we might run some companion pieces on bear baiting. And for the kids, a handicraft section — build your own thumb screw.”

“A whipping post in every back yard,” Terrell said.

“Tim didn’t intend to dwell on the gore,” the salesman said. Watching Karsh’s face he smiled quickly and nervously. “I’ll tell him to forget it.”

“Tell him also that I’m thinking of throwing his big hairy column the hell out of the paper.”

The salesman laughed shrilly. “That’ll jolt him. I’ll put it to him dead-pan.”

“Just the way I put it to you.”

The second of the press agents returned with the red-head named Bill, and the conversation swirled away like chips on a floodtide.

Terrell hated to leave. Karsh struck him at the moment as a blind Sampson or a senile Lear — a badgered wreck, surrounded by fools and sharpsters and drunks. The press agent was telling a wide-eyed Bill about the last scene of Alice in Wonderland. “It’s probably the greatest piece of writing in the world,” he said in a soft, belligerent voice. “Every man should read that once in his lifetime to a little girl — and not while he’s drunk, mind you. If it doesn’t cut right through to his heart you can scratch him for a no-good sonofabitch. Talk about loyalty tests! I can tell about a guy by listening to him read the part that goes—” He took the girl’s hand and stared at the ceiling. “Well, in so many words, she’s lying there and a twig falls on her, a leaf, I guess, and she wakes up and starts talking to her mother — sister, rather.”

“It’s lovely,” Bill said.

“Lewis Carroll on bullfights,” Karsh said, waving for a round of drinks. “That’s what I’d like to see in the goddamn paper.”

Terrell stood and caught Karsh’s eye. “I’m running along, Mike. Thanks for dinner.”

“Don’t mention it, boy.” Karsh smiled up at him and patted his arm. “Keep pitching. You’re on something good.”

Terrell went outside feeling very sorry for Karsh. He seemed to make sense only at work. There he operated with brilliant precision, keeping every department of the paper under meticulous supervision. But the rest of his life was chaos. His marriage had ended in divorce several years ago and he had been bled white by his wife’s lawyers. He had taken a mistress which had added to his problems without ameliorating his loneliness. He had never been close to his children — a son and daughter — and saw very little of them now; the girl had married and moved to the west coast, and the son was a smooth and expensive youngster who dropped in at the office occasionally to discuss his financial needs.